DTS350 Semester Project

Introduction

In this project, I wanted to explore two basic questions. First, how are carbon emissions distributed globally? And for those countries who contribute the most to global carbon emissions, what industries should be the focus of regulation efforts?

Dataset

Our World in Data is a research organization which compiles large datasets to describe major, global issues. For this project, I used their CO₂/greenhouse gas dataset, which combines carbon emission and consumption data for each country, from a variety of sources. The data points go back as early as 1751 in some countries, and are updated up to 2018.

The researchers did a decent amount of cleanup already, standardizing country names and converting all tonne measurements to be in terms of carbon dioxide. They used a carbon dioxide:elemental carbon ratio of 3.664, based off their respective molar masses:

\(\frac{MW_{CO_{2}}}{MW_{C}}=\frac{44.01 g/mol}{12.01 g/mol}=3.664\)

Here is a small sample of the data, showcasing just a slice of the useful variables in the dataset:

Country	ISO Code	Year	CO₂ Emitted (Mt)	% Growth	CO₂ Consumed (Mt)	Population
Afghanistan	AFG	1949	0.015	NA	NA	7663783
Afghanistan	AFG	1950	0.084	475.000	NA	7752000
Afghanistan	AFG	1951	0.092	8.696	NA	7840000
Afghanistan	AFG	1952	0.092	0.000	NA	7936000
Afghanistan	AFG	1953	0.106	16.000	NA	8040000
Afghanistan	AFG	1954	0.106	0.000	NA	8151000

The full array of variables is laid out in the OWID codebook, with more detailed descriptions as well as attributions of the original sources they were pulled from.

Data cleaning: What should count as a country?

Some entries in the OWID database lack ISO codes; this means that on top of literal countries, it include data for continents and regions, as well as a handful of former nations. (listed right) These can be tricky to map for a handful of reasons:

Regions can overlap with countries.
It’s not clear whether colonies are included in country totals.
The way the dates are divided up for former countries can be odd… see the date ranges on the USSR
Mapping shifting borders is just inherently difficult.

While the regional/continental summaries could be useful for making geographic comparisons, for most visualizations I filtered them out of the dataset.

The majority of the other non-ISO entities are too small to really appear in my visualizations anyway. But, there are a few notable exceptions.

Country	Data Starts	Data Ends
Africa	1751	2018
Antarctic Fisheries	1987	2007
Asia	1751	2018
Asia (excl. China & India)	1751	2018
Czechoslovakia	1860	1991
EU-27	1751	2018
EU-28	1751	2018
Europe	1751	2018
Europe (excl. EU-27)	1751	2018
Europe (excl. EU-28)	1751	2018
French Equatorial Africa	1950	1958
International transport	1751	2018
KP Annex B	1959	2018
Kuwaiti Oil Fires	1991	1991
Macao	1959	2018

Country	Data Starts	Data Ends
Micronesia	1959	2018
Non-OECD	1959	2018
Non KP Annex B	1959	2018
North America	1751	2018
North America (excl. USA)	1751	2018
Oceania	1751	2018
OECD	1959	2018
Reunion	1950	2014
South America	1751	2018
Statistical Difference	1751	2018
United Korea	1905	1944
USSR	1830	1958
Yugoslavia	1880	1991
Zanzibar	1950	1969

A list of potentially interesting former-countries and colonies, plus the 1991 Kuwaiti Oil Fires, are listed in the table to the right. Based on their contributions to global CO2 production, the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the aforementioned fires are all relatively notable. These aren’t really relevant to my main questions, but I did include them when looking at historical trends.

Country	Peak CO2 Contributions (% of global)
USSR	16.095
Czechoslovakia	2.740
Kuwaiti Oil Fires	2.131
Yugoslavia	0.637
United Korea	0.372
Macao	0.007
French Equatorial Africa	0.005
Zanzibar	0.000

Historical Trends/Background

Initial emissions

I first looked at the year each country began emitting CO2, to get a better idea of the historical timeline. Simply graphing the number of new countries emitting CO2 by year helps show peak years of new development:

1950 and 1959 saw the first recorded emissions from a number of countries in Africa, as well as some in Asia and Central America. It’s also worth noting that 1959 is also the year the dataset (somewhat arbitrarily) begins subdividing the USSR.

The Global Picture

The distribution today

Largest Contributors Overall

The top five CO2 producing countries were responsible for 57.4% of global CO2 emissions in 2018. Note, as I will explore further below, that none of these countries were among the top producers relative to their populations; they are, as a group, just highly industrialized and/or populous. Still, since they are responsible for such a sizeable chunk of globable emissions, I decided to look at the sources of carbon emissions in each of these countries in more detail.

Parsing by Carbon Source

Parsing Per Capita

While less notable in absolute terms, these nations could be argued to be doing the ‘worst’ at restricting their contributions to climate change. The United States stands out as relatively high in both rankings.

Conclusions

Historically, carbon emissions increased globally over the 20th century, with newly industrializing nations joining the carbon economy in a few major waves.

Today, China, the United States, India, Russia, and Japan are the largest contributors to CO2 in absolute terms. China, the U.S., India, and Japan should prioritize reduction in their reliance on coal; Russia has a more diverse energy economy, with major dependence on gas, oil, and coal (in that order). Globally, coal and oil dominate the carbon source distribution, with gas also a notable contributor. Cement and flaring gas are relatively small contributors, both globally and in each of these countries.